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NFL Week 6 spin: What’s next for Cowboys, Anthony Richardson

NFL Week 6 spin: What’s next for Cowboys, Anthony Richardson

  • Ben Solak, ESPNOct 15, 2024, 06:30 AM ET

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      Ben Solak joined ESPN in 2024 as a national NFL analyst. He previously covered the NFL at The Ringer, Bleeding Green Nation and The Draft Network.

OK, NFL Week 6 is behind us. I think I know the league’s good teams at this point … the Chiefs, Ravens, Vikings, Texans, Lions, Bills, maybe the Packers. We have a few teams on Plucky Watch, such as the Falcons, Buccaneers, Commanders and Bears. Otherwise, I’ve seen what I need to see. Let’s skip to the Ravens-Lions Super Bowl.

(Nobody’s reading this intro, right? And you can’t screenshot these?)

While the upper echelon of NFL teams finally seems clear for the first time this season, a lot’s going to change between now and playoff time, especially with all these 3-3 teams. The one I’m focusing on this week? The Cowboys.

Every Tuesday, I’ll spin the previous week of NFL football forward, looking at what the biggest storylines mean and what comes next. We’ll take a first look at the consequences of “Monday Night Football,” break down a major trend or two, and highlight some key individual players and plays. There will be film. There will be stats (a whole section of them). And there will be fun. Let’s jump in.

Jump to a section:
The Big Thing: Eulogy of the 2024 Cowboys
Mailbag: Answering questions from … you
Preseason lie detector test: Week 6 hindsight
Second Take: Colts can’t stick with Flacco
Next Ben Stats: Wild Week 6 stats
‘Monday Night Football’ spin

The Big Thing: The Cowboys can’t seem to get up from the mat

Every week, this column will kick off with one wide look at a key game, player or trend from the previous Sunday of NFL action. What does it mean for the rest of the season?

In 2021, the Dallas Cowboys went 12-5. They scored 530 total points that season, the second of Mike McCarthy’s coaching tenure — a team record. Quarterback Dak Prescott threw for 4,449 yards and a career-best 37 touchdowns, while CeeDee Lamb led all Cowboys receivers with 1,102 receiving yards in just his second season as a pro. Pass rusher Micah Parsons won Defensive Rookie of the Year; cornerback Trevon Diggs had 11 interceptions and somehow didn’t win Defensive Player of the Year. Zack Martin was Zack Martining. The Cowboys were a good football team.

Despite all their regular-season success, the Cowboys lost 23-17 to the 49ers in the wild-card round of the playoffs.

In 2022, the Cowboys again went 12-5. There was more drama that season, though. Prescott missed time (backup Cooper Rush went 4-0) and threw a league-high 15 interceptions. But Lamb ascended into the elite tier with 1,359 receiving yards, Parsons was a first-team All-Pro again and the Cowboys were still a good football team.

They beat the Buccaneers in the postseason for their first road playoff win since 1992. Then they ran into the 49ers in the divisional round for a 19-12 loss. Season over.

In 2023, the Cowboys yet again went 12-5. Prescott kicked the interception habit, Lamb was still awesome, and cornerback DaRon Bland emerged. But no one cares about that anymore. Skip to the end of the story. The Cowboys won the division, hosted the Packers and got summarily pantsed. They fell behind 27-7 by halftime and lost 48-32. Three straight years of 12-win regular seasons and not a conference championship game to be seen.

At the time, that Green Bay game was half extremely shocking and half totally expected. The Packers had barely slipped into the playoffs, but of course Dallas had disappointed in the postseason before. Still, it did not at all seem like a portend of things to come. Yet here we are, six weeks into the regular season, and the Cowboys just got jumped in their home stadium once again. The Lions led the Cowboys 27-6 at the half, three weeks after the Ravens led the Cowboys 21-6 at the half and four weeks after the Saints led 35-16 at the half.

In their past four home games, the Cowboys have a first-half point differential of minus-75, and they are (unsurprisingly) 0-4. On the season, they’re 3-3, with their road wins coming by a combined 24 points. The three losses at home have come by a combined 66 points. Dallas is one of only two teams in the past decade to be at least .500 after six games with a point differential as low as minus-42, and the other is the 2023 Commanders (3-3, minus-43). They finished 4-13.

There are two separate things at play in Dallas right now: the micro and macro views. The micro view is crystal clear and highly troubling. The Cowboys can’t stop any offense with a pulse. The departure of longtime defensive coordinator Dan Quinn this offseason took the bite out of the defense. Quinn’s commitment to a deep stable of dedicated pass rushers kept the Cowboys among the league’s leaders in pressure rate every season. When he left to become the Commanders’ coach, depth rushers Dante Fowler Jr. and Dorance Armstrong followed him to Washington. The injury bug bit at the wrong time, taking Parsons, DeMarcus Lawrence and rookie Marshawn Kneeland out for this game against the Lions, though the Dallas pass rush was already dropping to fine but unspectacular levels before the absences accumulated.

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1:19

Dan Orlovsky: Jerry Jones doesn’t have pulse of his Cowboys team

Dan Orlovsky blasts Jerry Jones after saying the Cowboys’ huge loss to the Lions was shocking.

As new defensive coordinator Mike Zimmer has tried to transition this depth chart to his style, gaps have become apparent. Diggs looks nothing like the ball-hawking star he was under Quinn. Undersized linebackers DeMarvion Overshown and Damone Clark, drafted for Quinn’s defensive approach, lack the staunchness against the run to survive in Zimmer’s defense. Defensive tackles Mazi Smith and Osa Odighizuwa are struggling in the trenches. There is no defender playing better ball now than he did under Quinn, nor is there a surprising contributor pulling beyond their usual weight. The Cowboys are giving up 0.17 EPA per run on defense. That’s not only the worst number among defenses in 2024, it would also be the worst single-season figure since 2006.

The story on defense is one of a schematic change and accordingly misfit personnel — nothing new in the NFL. The story on offense is a familiar one, too. Just plain old talent attrition.

The 2021 Cowboys offense that scored 530 points was powered by Prescott, Lamb, Martin and Ezekiel Elliott, and they’re all still on the 2024 team, too. But Elliott isn’t what he used to be, and he serves as a microcosm for the decay of an offense over time. Everything around Dallas’ stars — Prescott, Lamb and Martin — is worse than it once was. Tyron Smith and Tyler Biadasz are gone from the offensive line. The pass-catching room was bolstered by Michael Gallup, Noah Brown and Dalton Schultz. Injuries and contracts caught up, and those posts are now manned by Brandin Cooks, Jalen Tolbert and Jake Ferguson. Elliott was spry and spelled by the electric Tony Pollard, who is succeeding in a No. 1 role in Tennessee despite struggling in a similar role last season in Dallas.

Watch the Cowboys’ offense for two series, and you can feel the lack of playmakers and optionality. Every non-Lamb target who successfully moves the sticks feels like a miracle. And even after such a play, the opposing defense is happy to trot out man coverage again and dare Tolbert, Jalen Brooks and KaVontae Turpin to keep beating them. Dallas absolutely, unequivocally cannot run the football, either. Nobody in the backfield (not Elliott, Rico Dowdle, Deuce Vaughn or Hunter Luepke) has any juice at all. The team has four explosive rushes from running backs so far; only two teams have fewer.

Talent and team construction aren’t static in the NFL. Good players aren’t consistently good, year over year. The margins are too small in this highly precise, highly physical sport with its tiny regular season and best-of-one playoff series. When you have hot iron — like a quarterback throwing for 37 touchdowns, a young receiver going for 1,400 yards, an All-Pro pass rusher on a rookie deal and an 11-interception peak season from a risk-taking corner — you have to strike, then and there. If you blow that season, you aren’t guaranteed to make it back, even if you run the exact same team back the next season. As Dan Campbell, the coach opposite the Cowboys on Sunday, told his Lions when they lost the NFC Championship Game in January: “This may have been our only shot.”

And that brings us to our macro view, which is still one of attrition — but attrition of a different sort. There is a great and unique pain in that concoction of regular-season success and postseason failure that the Cowboys have endured in recent years. The consistent winning performances in the regular season create high expectations, from which the postseason falls are all the more crushing. Over and over and over again, the McCarthy-era Cowboys climbed the mountain to do only one thing: fall from it.

Now, this team finally looks like it can’t get up from the mat. It doesn’t have the energy to climb the mountain again, not when so many players and coaches have left. And the players and coaches who remain are a year older, a year more banged up and a year more jaded. Whatever sharp edge Dallas had as a contending team, full of belief, has been dulled.

Look no further than the quarterback. Prescott was a leading name in the MVP race for all of last season. Now? He looks like himself for five plays, six plays, maybe seven — and then is suddenly scattershot and risky. These issues are particularly harrowing in the red zone, where he is dead last in success rate among 31 quarterbacks this season and third last in EPA per dropback. Before he gets to the 20-yard line, he’s 18th in both metrics. Far from exciting, but at least around league average.

I’m not entirely sure why Prescott is so much worse than he was for the bulk of last season, but I believe he can regain his form. I’m not entirely sure why Lamb has only two games this season with double-digit targets when he ended last season with seven consecutive such games, but I believe he can return to that dominance, as well. What I don’t believe is that solving those problems will achieve anything new for Dallas. Maybe the Cowboys will win a few more regular-season games, but they’ve already done that. It’s not interesting anymore. It hasn’t been interesting for a while.

This team seems dead in the water, and you can feel it circling the drain. The Cowboys were ready to compete in 2021, 2022 and maybe even still in 2023, and they couldn’t get the ball in the hole. We can rehash postseason Prescott and McCarthy game management all we want, but that’s for a different eulogy. This is a eulogy for the 2024 Cowboys, the camel with one too many straws on its broken back. They’re a little worse now, just about everywhere.

It’s not anyone’s fault, really. Jerry Jones could have drafted better. McCarthy should have developed players a little better. Prescott and the remaining stars need to play better. But it’s not anyone’s fault, because it is the inevitability of time, accelerated a bit by those heartbreaking playoff losses. This is what happens to contending teams. They contend … and then they wane.

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9:15

Stephen A. goes through everything that’s wrong with the Cowboys

Stephen A. Smith, Dan Orlovsky and Shannon Sharpe breaks down the Lions’ huge win over the Cowboys.

So perhaps Dallas will solve its running game over the bye week, and perhaps the offensive line shuffling will help. Tolbert has had some flashes as a complementary pass catcher, as has Dowdle as a three-down back with receiving chops. Perhaps the return of Bland, Parsons and Lawrence to the defensive lineup, as well as accrued time in the new Zimmer defense, will eventually return this unit to its former glory. We’ll find out real quick if anything indeed is different: Those pesky 49ers, the bugaboo of the McCarthy era in Dallas, are the Cowboys’ opponent in Week 8. A win over the 49ers, whom the Cowboys haven’t beaten since 2020, could resurrect this season in one fell swoop.

But even if everything does break right for Dallas, what is this team? The same stars and same coach back with a slightly worse supporting case, everyone another year older, everyone another year frustrated. These Lions will be waiting for them in the postseason, as will the Packers and inevitably the Niners. Why should anyone expect anything different from Dallas this season?

From y’all

The best part of writing this column is hearing from all of you. Hit me on X (@BenjaminSolak) or by email ([email protected]) anytime — but especially on Monday each week — to ask a question and potentially get it answered here.

From Tyler: “I feel like safeties are continuing to demonstrate that they impact the game at a higher level than they are currently valued. (Brian Branch, Xavier McKinney, Jessie Bates III and Antoine Winfield Jr. are all awesome and make noticeable differences.) Do you feel the position will climb in value again, or are they stuck next to running backs at the bottom of the positional value totem pole?”

Excellent question, Tyler. I’ve been harping on the value of the safety position for years now, and it came to a crescendo in 2022 draft. Kyle Hamilton was the best player available, and he was selected at No. 14. That discount was just far, far too great.

The problem with safety value is that it’s a thin position. The top of the market has grown pretty competitive over the past decade, and the fact that some top safeties have indeed made it to the open market in the past few seasons (Bates, McKinney and Marcus Williams) has yanked the ceiling of the position up. As Tyler points out, those top guys all feel extremely impactful to their defenses.

The problem is that the middle tier of guys doesn’t have a proportional impact on their defenses. Instead, they’re rather interchangeable. Some of the solid, middle-tier safeties in the league right now are Grant Delpit, Reed Blankenship, Amani Hooker, Jalen Thompson, Brandon Jones and Juan Thornhill. They’re all solid players, but how much would a betting line move if they were out for a week? How much would a defensive system change if they were absent?

The smart teams pursue top-tier safeties when they can find them. The Ravens, Chiefs, Packers, Steelers and Patriots have all either drafted or signed top-flight guys in recent years. But for those teams who miss out on the elite class, there’s no use overpaying to sign mid-tier safeties. (Just ask every Seahawks fan since the Legion of Boom ended.)

From Steve: “One aspect of the Bucs that I rarely see talked about is the job that Jason Licht has done in a decade or so running the team. I think he’s sneakily been one of the best GMs in football over that time, am I way off base here?”

Absolutely not. There isn’t a general manager who has been on a better draft-and-develop run than Licht over the past five years. Here’s an absolute bananas stat for you: 21 different Buccaneers took a snap on defense against the Saints on Sunday. Seventeen of them were drafted by Licht at some point in the past decade, and two of the other four were drafted before Licht’s time in Tampa Bay. Only Greg Gaines’ 21 snaps and C.J. Brewer’s nine snaps were brought from outside the Buccaneers family.

And remember, they’re not doing this with elite picks. Key contributions have come this season from Tykee Smith, Jalen McMillan, Bucky Irving, Yaya Diaby, SirVocea Dennis, Rachaad White, Cade Otton and Zyon McCollum. Every player I just named was drafted in Rounds 3-5 of the past three drafts.

It’s always important to remember that general managers get hot, which means they can also get cold. But the Buccaneers were supposed to suffer a long recovery from the all-in Tom Brady era, and they’ve largely sidestepped it as a product of excellent drafting from Licht. Hats off to him.

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1:37

Why Baker Mayfield has earned set-and-forget status in fantasy

Field Yates and Daniel Dopp discuss how Baker Mayfield’s performances have made him a reliable set-and-forget option in fantasy lineups.

From Eric: “DRAKE MAYE??!!!???!?!?!??”

Yeah, yeah, I’m getting there. Hold your horses. (Young man looked pretty good, though, didn’t he?)

Preseason lie detector

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about some snake oil I was sold this summer. Teams can say whatever they want during training camp, but the film bares all. And my lie detector was going off this week on some common preseason refrains.

Preseason refrain lie detector: Drake Maye needed to sit

I was a big Maye guy in the lead-up to the 2024 draft, and on Sunday against the Texans, everything I loved about his game was on display. He was accurate on the move and downfield. He stood tall in the face of pressure and made plays from poor pockets. And when he couldn’t, he had plenty of juice as a scrambler. The Patriots had a ton of turnovers, continued to shuffle offensive linemen and never really had a chance against Houston — but it was all water under the bridge, because, man, did Maye look good.

While Maye was an exciting prospect, many were reasonably worried about Maye playing behind this Patriots offensive line, which started the season bad and has only gotten worse as injuries have taken their toll. You never want to David Carr your rookie quarterback (sticking him behind bad pass protection that he can never develop for fear of constant hits in the pocket). That, plus the ever-promising myth of sitting and developing young quarterbacks, had many people thinking Maye should spend the year on the bench in New England, waiting to start once the environment was a bit safer.

This game proved those concerns half wrong. Maye was under a lot of pressure — over 40% of his dropbacks — but also handled most of that pressure well. He took some big hits and spent some scary seconds on the ground, but I have news for you: The big-bodied, big-armed, playmaking young quarterback is going to take some big hits no matter when he plays. If you’re worried about injury, you’ll never get to see Maye play.

Here’s a great example of what Maye can do behind a bad line. Watch him look for the quick out from the tight end, then identify the corner is squatting and eat the throw. Because his left tackle has been losing all game, Maye knows he needs to relocate fast, so he breaks the pocket — not with the intent to scramble, but rather with the intent to create. His eyes and momentum pull the defenders to the sideline, which forms a void for Hunter Henry to find near the numbers. Calm, easy, controlled and an explosive gain.

Maye — who finished 20-of-33 for 243 yards, three touchdown passes and two interceptions — is good enough right now to play winning football for the Patriots, who have the Jaguars, Jets and Titans as their next three opponents. I promise you, they’re going to win one of those games on the back of Maye’s explosive play potential. I’m also sure that there will be some rough stretches in there as well. There’s little help in the offense for Maye.

But Maye looks like what he was billed as out of North Carolina, much like Caleb Williams looks like the real deal in Chicago and Jayden Daniels does in Washington. Sometimes, you don’t need to sit the rookies when the rookies are really good. You can put them out there, let them take their rookie lumps and watch them flourish week over week.

It’s still true that the Patriots need better receivers and more offensive line help. But Maye didn’t need to sit this season out. I think he’s going to benefit from playing in a big way.

Verdict: LIE DETECTED

Preseason refrain lie detector: The Eagles’ offense is “95% new”

We probably didn’t need the season to set the lie detector off on this one. The Eagles claimed to be totally reimagining their offense under new offensive coordinator Kellen Moore this summer. There was going to be more pre-snap motion. There were going to be more plays under center. There were going to be more throws for Jalen Hurts over the middle of the field. That college-inspired, super-simplified offense that had no answers against the blitz? That was in the trash.

The Eagles won 20-16 against the Browns on Sunday, but the generally unconvincing fashion of the victory left most fans disappointed. Receiver A.J. Brown was back from injury, and his deployment in the new-look offense was under the most scrutiny. Here are all the routes he was targeted on during the win over Cleveland.

Of course, there’s nothing inherently wrong with using Brown on this sort of route tree. His best routes have always been the go ball, the slant and the deep in-breaker. All gos and slants against a predictably man-heavy coverage menu from the Browns is a simple but reasonable approach. Only … where are all those deep in-breakers?

Well, those are the middle of the field targets that we were promised would return to this offense, and they haven’t at all. Seven percent of Hurts’ pass attempts this season have been delivered between the numbers and between 10 to 20 yards downfield — what we might call the intermediate middle of the field. Only four quarterbacks are attempting a smaller percentage of their passes to that intermediate middle, and that 7% is just about in line with Hurts’ average in previous seasons.

Under center? That has been 4% of Hurts’ dropbacks, an uptick of less than 1% from his previous seasons. The only delivery on what we were promised is pre-snap motion, which the Eagles are using on 47% of Hurts’ dropbacks this season, a remarkable increase from the previous offenses. But motion isn’t going to change Brown’s route tree, or perhaps more importantly, the routes that Hurts is willing to throw. And as such, motion has become new window dressing on the same old concepts.

This is not Moore’s offense … not even close. This is Hurts’ offense. It is a spread, gun offense with a complex running game that involves the quarterback. It wins with isolation routes and basic half-field concepts that take advantage of wide formations and the run threat via run-pass options. It is, in short, the same college offense the Eagles have been running for Hurts for years.

This offense is 95% the same, and it’s going to run into the same problems it always has — especially if pass protection doesn’t stay elite as the Eagles continue to contend with offensive line injuries.

Verdict: LIE DETECTED

Preseason refrain lie detector: Bo Nix is the most accurate QB in this rookie class even when you remove the short/behind-the-line-of-scrimmage stuff

That’s what Denver coach Sean Payton said after drafting Nix — that his rookie signal-caller wasn’t just the most accurate passer in college football because he threw underneath constantly, but rather even when including deep passes. Well, here’s the rookie class in the NFL through six weeks, and Nix has been the worst downfield passer so far.

But the Broncos’ offense is acting like it has a guy that it really doesn’t. Denver is throwing a lot of screens (13% of Nix’s dropbacks, which is the seventh-highest rate in the league). But when you remove those screens from the sample, Nix has one of the longest average times to throw in football; only Brock Purdy and Sam Darnold, in their under-center- and play-action-heavy offenses, have fewer dropbacks in the quick game.

There are chances for Nix to find quick throws or timely checkdowns, but he’s usually far too late to get there on time. As such, he’s holding the ball and entering creation mode, turning down open receivers in the process and creating a ton of pressure (78 pressured dropbacks, fourth most on the season). This play style is never really acceptable, but it would be palatable if it were being paid off with explosive downfield passes. Package the screens with the running game, then flood some routes downfield and try to hit some shots, both in and out of structure. That’s how the Bills and Ravens are doing football right now. They’re just doing it far, far more effectively than the Broncos, because they have quarterbacks who can sustain that approach. The Broncos don’t.

Nix has not been accurate enough at the NFL level to sustain a traditional dropback passing game. He doesn’t see the routes fast enough yet or hit them reliably. He can absolutely get better there, and given his college performance, I expect him to do so. But in the meantime, he needs to be carried by the offense. The running and screen games both need to produce more after contact. The downfield shots must become less frequent in favor of even more checkdowns, which also need to produce more yards after the catch. Nix is nowhere near ready to run a Sean Payton offense right now.

Verdict: LIE DETECTED

Second Take: No, the Colts shouldn’t stick with Joe Flacco

ESPN’s “First Take” is known for, well, providing the first take on things — the instant reactions. Second Take is not a place for instant reactions but rather the spot where I’ll let the dust settle before taking perhaps a bit of a contrarian view.

Late-career Joe Flacco is one of my favorite watches every week. The Colts quarterback plays like he doesn’t have anything to lose (spoiler alert: he doesn’t). If there’s a sliver of sunlight on a downfield window, he launches that sucker. When not shooting from half court, he hits the layups and lets his skill players win for him. He plays, in short, like a quality veteran backup. Pair him with a good playcaller, such as Kevin Stefanski or Shane Steichen, and a couple of solid pass catchers, and we’ve got a stew going.

This is a very normal thing to happen, where a veteran quarterback raises the floor of an offense that’s far more volatile with a young passer at the helm. We’ve seen it happen about six billion times in the past few years. Ryan Fitzpatrick in for Tua Tagovailoa, Taylor Heinicke in for Desmond Ridder, Andy Dalton in for Bryce Young, Mitchell Trubisky in for Kenny Pickett, Mason Rudolph in for Will Levis, Jacoby Brissett for Sam Howell. That’s why they’re veterans, and that’s why you pay them. They are stabilizing forces.

And just as it’s certain that a veteran backup will settle an offense, it’s equally certain that someone will suggest that said veteran backup should actually stay the starter.

No.

I’m convinced nobody actually watches Anthony Richardson. They just wait until box scores and highlight packages tell them about the final stat line, the three best plays and the three worst plays, and then they go from there. Before Richardson got hurt against the Steelers, which put Flacco in the game in the first place, he hit a great tight-window throw to Michael Pittman Jr. working over the middle of the field. He beat a closing zone defender with accuracy and velocity.

Do you want to bench this player? Do you want to bench the top-five selection who has played less than half of a season as an NFL pro for Joe Flacco? Flacco is 39 years old and just had some peak play in relief of Deshaun Watson in Cleveland last season. But we also just saw Steichen coach his offense so fluently that he made Gardner Minshew viable in 2023. And not just viable — he made Minshew look good enough for the Raiders to pay the veteran a starter-lite contract this year.

I don’t know if Richardson is going to end up good. For every splash play, there’s an easily avoidable mistake of youth and inexperience. And even if he irons out that inconsistency, he’ll still need to stay on the field. His injury history is already worrisome. What I do know is that there has been so much promising play from Richardson that the entire thrust of the Colts organization should be, and rightfully is, dedicated to his development right now.

This is not a Young/Dalton situation, where the young quarterback has been so bad that he is hamstringing the offense. This is not a Howell/Brissett situation, where you’re just giving a midround pick a flier’s chance to win the job. This is not a Tagovailoa/Fitzpatrick situation, where the building is clearly split on the promise of the young QB. Listen to how the Colts talk about Richardson sometime; they think they have the next Josh Allen on their hands.

Yes, Steichen is really good at scheming around solid vet quarterbacks. And yes, Flacco is great at giving Alec Pierce a 50-50 ball to grab. But the future in Indianapolis is Richardson, and as long as the Colts can keep him healthy, their future is as starry as ever.

I’m excited to be back in this space in exactly five weeks when Jarrett Stidham has the Broncos’ offense humming in a way Bo Nix never did.

Next Ben Stats

NFL Next Gen Stats are unique and insightful nuggets of data that are gleaned from tracking chips and massive databases. Next Ben Stats are usually numbers I made up. Both are below.

56.8%: That’s the success rate of Caleb Williams’ dropbacks over the past three weeks of football. It’s the best number for any quarterback in the league.

Now, let’s be very clear about something: Williams and the Bears have played the Panthers, Rams and Jaguars — three of the worst defenses in the NFL — over that time. They caught two of them at home, too. But that happens sometimes; you get easy stretches, and you have to take advantage of them. And the Bears have done just that. Every week, the operation in the huddle and at the line of scrimmage has gotten a little better.

I don’t have a metric for this, so I’ll make one up (it is Next Ben Stats, after all). Williams leads the league right now in the number of plays called, changed or adjusted at the line of scrimmage. He has full command of the offense.

Williams is seeing the field faster, learning which receivers to trust and where and calibrating to what he can and can’t get away with. In every single week since his debut, Williams’ success rate isn’t the only thing that’s rising. The average separation of the receivers he’s targeting is climbing, as well. He’s finding the right throws and avoiding high-risk plays. This is what it looks like when a rookie gets his sea legs under him.

It’ll get harder at some point. But not next week, when the Bears are on bye. And not the following week, when he draws the Commanders’ defense. That one will be the first overall pick versus the second overall pick. Mark your calendars.

11: That’s how many times Lions backup offensive lineman Dan Skipper reported as eligible Sunday against the Cowboys.

I can’t confirm or deny if this is a record for eligible offensive lineman snaps, but I’m willing to claim it’s close. Skipper famously did but technically didn’t report eligible on what would have been a winning play for the Lions in Dallas last season. The refs largely botched a situation that they should have executed, and the Lions lost that crucial game to Dallas.

Don’t worry if you forgot all about it, because the Lions sure didn’t. Detroit was thrilled to remind Dallas and the referees of last season’s injustice. It used Skipper as a tight end on the first play of the game (a 5-yard run) and had him out there for the kneel down before halftime, which is unbelievably gratuitous and also very funny. He and tackle Taylor Decker were both eligible for a second-quarter touchdown run, as well — significant, as Decker was meant to be the eligible receiver on the failed two-point attempt last season.

Speaking of that failed two-point attempt, the Lions tried to go back to the well on the Cowboys! They called a Decker target on a similar play to the one that got axed by the refs last season. (This year, Skipper actually did report as an eligible receiver and lined up as such.) Unsurprisingly, the Cowboys were kind of wise to the shtick at this point, and linebacker Damone Clark was perhaps the most well-prepared defender for an offensive lineman red zone route I’ve ever seen.

Pettiness is good; merciless pettiness while up four touchdowns is even better. After the failed Decker target, the Lions tried to get a different offensive lineman touchdown with a hook-n-ladder toss to right tackle Penei Sewell (which was very rightfully called back for a procedural penalty, much to the televised chagrin of offensive coordinator Ben Johnson). That was a legit trick play! And the Lions burned it up 37-9 against Dallas for the bit. I admire the commitment, and I aspire to it.

3.9: That’s how many yards per dropback Deshaun Watson is averaging this season. Of 815 quarterbacking seasons since 2000, that is 814th.

Only 2000 Akili Smith was producing fewer passing yards per dropback (3.6) than Watson is right now, and Smith is viewed as one of the greatest busts in NFL draft history. Unsurprisingly, 2000 Smith is also the only quarterback to produce touchdowns and first downs at a lower rate than 2024 Watson. We haven’t seen a starting quarterback play this poorly in 23 years, and if Watson indeed finishes the season as the Browns’ starter (a universe I am increasingly realizing might be forced upon us), then we will be watching one of the worst seasons of modern football.

I have nothing to say of Watson’s play. It’s bad, it has been bad ever since he stepped into Cleveland, and every single contract capitulation made by the Browns for Watson has been worse than the one before. There’s no schematic machination or clever personnel that’s going to change the fact that Watson has no interest in playing football well right now.

But 2000 Smith is important to bring up for another reason: to remember the 2003 drafting of Carson Palmer. Smith was so bad that he lost his job after that 2000 season, and after the Bengals floated with free agent quarterbacks for a season or two, they nailed the drafting of Palmer and kicked off a decade of offensive prosperity and quality team play. Things change fast in the NFL. You can have the worst QB play in the history of the league, and three years later, you can suddenly have your franchise guy in hand.

Cutting Watson outright would hit the cap for a whopping $172.7 million dollars in dead money. That’s more than double the $85 million in dead cap that the Broncos’ cutting of Russell Wilson created, which was more than double the previous high at the time Wilson was cut. That seems like a crippling franchise blow only because we don’t know who the next guy is. But if the Browns were to nail the selection of a first-round signal-caller in the 2025 draft, that $172.7 million would minimize in importance real quick. Until then, we have yet another week of watching what is, with no exaggeration, historically bad football.

0: That’s how much interest defenses have in tackling Derrick Henry in the fourth quarter. This Next Ben Stat was dropped by Tej Seth of SumerSports earlier this week. Look at how Henry’s success rate as a rusher changes by quarter. The more game time passes, the better he gets.

Each of the Ravens’ past two wins have featured dagger runs by Henry late in the game. This past Sunday, a 27-yarder put Baltimore in scoring range to make it a two-score game late against the Commanders. And against the Bengals in Week 5, a 50-yard rumble put the Ravens in winning field goal range, as well. The effect of cumulative “body blows” in the rushing game is something often cited by coaches but rarely measurable in data. The one back for whom the impact is clear and obvious is Henry.

Monday Night Motion

Each week, we will pick out one or two of the biggest storylines from “Monday Night Football” and break down what it means for the rest of the season.

Jets fans, I have good news … and I have bad news.

The good news is that the Jets made many of the changes for which the media and fan base were clamoring. They were in motion on 72.9% of their plays on offense by NFL Next Gen Stats’ tracking, by far the biggest mark for them in a game this season. Fewer plays were called or adjusted by Aaron Rodgers at the line of scrimmage, and those he did adjust generally went well. Breece Hall became the focal point of the offense with 113 yards on the ground and 56 through the air. And overall, the Jets were more explosive in this game than they’d ever been on offense this season. We saw seven big pass gains and two more on runs.

Here’s the bad news: The Jets still lost. The red zone offense stalled, pass protection struggled on third downs and the run defense continued to struggle when facing a team willing to mash them with heavy personnel. The Jets certainly suffered on untimely penalties and poor special teams play, but so did the Bills. The Jets were still largely outclassed. Without a halftime Hail Mary, this game wouldn’t have looked as close.

I do think the offense was better and will continue to get better — not so much because Todd Downing is calling more jet motions, but because Rodgers is such a hyperspecific quarterback, and his chemistry will continue to improve with his receivers over time. But Jets fans were looking for a panacea this past week, and instead they got a small step forward. Hopefully not too little, too late.

There’s another would-be panacea the Jets can pursue, of course. He currently has a hamstring injury in Las Vegas. But as I wrote last week, I have my doubts on Davante Adams solving much, too.